


On the Road Again

by rilina



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Female Protagonist, Gen, Post-Canon, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-13
Updated: 2008-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:43:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilina/pseuds/rilina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Toph chooses to do, after the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Road Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oyceter](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Oyceter).



> Written for oyceter; her prompt was "Avatar, Toph, post-series, reconstruction." It was an amazing prompt. I don't really think I did justice to it.

When everyone else has gone home to lives of schmoopy normality, Toph returns to the road. Home for her has always been a prison, a jeweled box that she was raised to ornament, a set of walls she had to break to escape. She can't imagine anything that could persuade her to return, not when there's still so much of the wide world for her to explore.

She asks only for a ship to take her back to the Earth Kingdom, and once back on her beloved dry ground, she walks right out of her friends' lives. Everyone worries at first when she sends them no word. Then the rumors reach them from Ba Sing Se and Omashu--stories of a blind bender wandering the Earth Kingdom who is rebuilding villages destroyed during the war.

Her work is still unfinished many years later, when a young girl tracks Toph down at a roadside restaurant, where she's polishing off a mountain of dumplings. The girl throws herself at Toph's feet and cries, "Great teacher! Please take me as your student!"

"Sorry, sweetheart," Toph says indistinctly, between bites. "I'm no one's master these days."

"But Master Katara sent me to find you! She said no one else would do!"

Toph puts down her chopsticks and reaches out a hand. Her scarred fingers brush against the soft fur collar of a water tribe coat. "You're a long way from home. Are you a bender?"

"I am." The girl bows her head even closer to the ground. Toph supposes she'll have to make an exception.

"Then get up, kiddo. We still have lots of work to do thanks to the war."

The girl scrambles to her feet as commanded. "The war? But that ended thirty years ago."

"As I said, it's _a lot_ of work. For all of us." Toph stands up and cracks her knuckles as she stretches. She's ready to start her next journey. "And maybe for you, the Avatar, most of all."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Postscripts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13843) by [rilina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilina/pseuds/rilina)




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